Subtle change to artist name not showing up

[crudson]

I changed one of my artist names by adding two periods to it (J K Rowling -> J. K. Rowling) and just the old one is still showing up in the left pane, which is of course now leading to an empty album list. I have re-indexed a few times and cleared cache, yet still the updated artist is not showing up. Is there something I can do to fix this please? I am able to navigate to the new artist by searching for it, just the left pane is still the old one.

[jigsaw]

Have you tried restarting tomcat?
Is your client on the same machine as the server?
Do you have a proxy-server in the mix?

I have got some feedback from other users who do not find newly added or changed folders in the left pane windows. After experimenting a bit I found three work-arounds which work:
- Re-index so the search will locate the correct album
- Restart tomcat
- Wait until the next day

The last one is the most weird one and led me to think it was because the two users experiencing this both were at their respective work places and I was suspecting some proxy-server with cache or something is causing this. This never occurs for me, but I am never behind any proxy-server. Neither at work nor at home.

[sindre_mehus]

There are some issues with caching of the left pane. For performance reasons it uses the "Last-Modified" and "If-Modified-Since" HTTP parameters, thus avoiding unnecessary reading of the music root folders.

This works fine in Opera (and IE, I think), but Firefox seems to cache it too eagerly. It sometimes also happens when changing Susbonic themes in Firefox; all panes except the left changes theme. It doesn't happen always, however, and I haven't been able to figure it out yet.

As a work-around, try emptying the browser cache.

Cheers,
Sindre

[sindre_mehus]

Okay, I think I figured it out. Seems like adding an "Expires" HTTP header makes Firefox behave like we want.

I'll include this fix in the upcoming 3.4 release.

[jigsaw]

Okay, I think I figured it out. Seems like adding an "Expires" HTTP header makes Firefox behave like we want.

I'll include this fix in the upcoming 3.4 release.

That is great Sindre!
Have you ever experienced this in IE?
I am using Firefox myself and has never seen this problem. After checking with the user who reported the issue earlier she told me she is usually using IE and not Firefox. She was not sure, but could not recall seeing this issue when using Firefox, only IE.

I will ask the second user who reported the issue and ask them both to try emptying the browser cache too.

Thank you for the excellent support =)

[sindre_mehus]

Have you ever experienced this in IE?

I hardly ever use IE, but I tested it now - and it shows the same problem. The fix seems to work for IE too, however

[jigsaw]

Have you ever experienced this in IE?

I hardly ever use IE, but I tested it now - and it shows the same problem. The fix seems to work for IE too, however

There are still some ignorant fools using IE I'm afraid..
Thank you again! Looking forward to the next release!

[crudson]

My friend who had never accessed my server had the same problem, so it definitely wasn't a caching problem.

I just restarted tomcat and this has fixed the problem.

I am glad that in the process of thinking about this you have incorporated a cache fix! I am very appreciative for you efforts.

[sindre_mehus]

I see. Well, there is some server-side caching going on, too. The content of the root music directory is only re-read if the timestamp of the directory has changed.

Now, renaming a subdirectory would normally cause the timestamp of the root dir to change, at least that's what happening on my Win XP system.

Can you please state what OS you're running, and if your music is located on network disks etc? Can you also try to reproduce the error by renaming a different subdirectory and see if the timestamp changes, and whether the left pane is updated.

Thanks!
Sindre

[crudson]

Server is XP Home. Music collection is single-rooted on a local disk (USB2).

I did another test. Here is what I did and observations.

- Renamed one artist by changing a space to a period
-- Date Last Modified in explorer is NOT updated for my system
- Rebuilt search index
- Reloaded left pane from client
-- Still shows the old name
- Accessed from another computer that has never accessed the server
-- Still shows old name
- Searched for artist using partial name
-- Am able to navigate to an album
-- New artist name shows correctly here
-- Clicking on artist here leads me to the correct album listings for the new name
- Restarted the server
- Reloaded left pane in client
-- Correct artist name now shows up

Interesting that a simple restart corrects it. I don't expect you are doing the equivalent of a rescan on server start.

I wonder also if renaming an album name would result in the same behaviour. I could do another test with this.

Is it too expensive to do a root directory scan on every index rebuild?

[jigsaw]

Subsonic version: 3.3 (build 516)
Application server: Apache Tomcat/6.0.13
OS: Fedora Core release 6 (Zod)
Music collection: Mounted Samba-share located on Windows XP

I have tested altering the name of a directory and reviewing the different times in the inode of the directory itself and it's root directory.

As crudson I tested just changing a whitespace to a period in the name of the directory. I tested both making the change from the XP system were the music collection reside and also making the changes from the Server which has it mounted.

My observations are:
Changes made from XP-system with music on local drive:
---------------------------------------------------------------

# Windows Explorer on client reports (properties of directory):
-- Subdirectory

Modification time: Not affected
Access time: Affected
-- Root directory

Modification time: Affected
Access time: Affected

# Server reports (inode of directory):
-- Subdirectory

Modification time (modtime): Not affected
Change time (ctime): Affected
Access time (atime): Affected
-- Root directory

Modification time (modtime): Affected
Change time (ctime): Affected
Access time (atime): Affected

Changes made from server with music mounted through Samba:
---------------------------------------------------------------
# Windows Explorer on client reports (properties of directory):
-- Subdirectory

Modification time: Not affected
Access time: Not affected
-- Root directory

Modification time: Affected
Access time: Affected

# Server reports (inode of directory):
-- Subdirectory

Modification time (modtime): Not affected
Change time (ctime): Affected
Access time (atime): Not affected
-- Root directory

Modification time (modtime): Affected
Change time (ctime): Affected
Access time (atime): Affected

It seems to me that if Subsonic re-reads the complete director if the root directory is modified it should work.
However if it is related to the modification timestamp of the directory which changed it may fail.

These results also apply identical if a new subdirectory is added to the root directory.
Root directory display affected modification time, but the subdirectory itself only displays altered change time.

Edit:
Forgot to mention that I tested both Firefox 3 Beta 3 and Internet Explorer 7 as client but could not reproduce the error through Subsonic myself. It is always other users who report the error to me.
The clients have been tested both from a fully independent workstation at work and also from the XP system which has the music collection.